Graph of the Day - While we are watching, freedom is crushed in Hong Kong

News from China and Hong Kong get worse by the day. Sometimes borderline absurd, as when we heard about the National Anthem Bill.  a new law that makes it a crime to insult China’s national anthem. Last year’s Extradition Bill was suspended after massive demonstrations.

But the Communist regime has made it clear that does not intend to respect the “One country, two systems” that was agreed between UK and China in 1984 when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed. Therefore, they have now come up with the new Security Law, which makes is intended to criminalise protests and opposition and stamp democracy activists as terrorists.

A national security law was planned to be implemented already in 2003, but it was withdrawn after massive protests. And there has been no attempt to introduce it again. Until now. Since China does not trust the Hong Kong parliament, the law will be carried through be decree. The law is so vaguely drafted that protests can be labelled as “separatism”. It also bans “foreign involvement” in domestic affairs, which targets human rights organisations and organisations for independent journalists.

All in all, it is a serious blow to the Hong Kong civil society and civil liberties. These have already been under attack for some time now as political scientists in the Varieties of Democracy Project, led by Gothenburg University has shown. They have developed indicators which allow for also a quantitative tracking of Communist China’s violation of human rights in Hong Kong. As you can see, it's getting worse.

The more Communist China meddles in Hong Kong, the less rights do the people have.

Source: V-Dem https://www.v-dem.net/en/ Note: Civil Society Oppression. The indicator ranges from 0 to 4, where 0 indicates that oppression is total. No CSOs are tolerated. 4 indicates full tolerance for CSOs to establish themselves and criticize the government. Civil liberties. The indicator ranges from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates that civil liberties are absent 1 that there are no restraints on private liberties and political liberties by the government.

And next year’s graphs will show how the lines continue to fall. Freedom will be crushed while we watch.